Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
To no one’s surprise, BTS – one of the world’s most famous boy bands – won the MTV Video Music Award’s inaugural award for Best K-pop group for their song “Boy With Luv.” The septet didn’t attend the ceremony to accept their Moon Man trophy. While the new category appears to be a nod to the popularity of Korean music in mainstream U.S. pop culture, fans have been vocal that the category is suspicious at best and borderline racist.
Created to celebrate South Korea’s soft power, KCON has grown into the Coachella of Korean culture. Debuting in 2012 as a one-day festival in Los Angeles just months after Psy’s “Gangnam Style” became a worldwide hit, KCON attracted 12,000 curious fans. Flash forward to 2019, when one of the world’s most-famous groups is the Korean boy band BTS, Korean beauty products are all the rage, chefs are incorporating kimchi into western cooking and streaming sites including Netflix are premiering buzzworthy Korean shows such as the zombie serial “Kingdom.”
2019 is shaping up to be Blackpink’s breakthrough year. The all-girl Korean quartet kicked off the U.S. leg of a world tour with a concert at Coachella that was livestreamed in New York’s Times Square.
Monsta X has been nominated for their first MTV Video Music Award for their English-language single “Who Do U Love?” They will become the first K-Pop group to perform at the iHeartRadio Music Festival later this year. (They previously were the first Korean boy band to take the stage at Jingle Ball.) But a highlight of 2019 for the group was performing in Oslo for South Korean president Moon Jae-in and King Harald V of Norway, where the countries’ dignitaries celebrated the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Norway.
The success of Korean superstars BTS has paved the way for multiple K-pop acts to try their chances in the U.S. — but few will be making their U.S. concert debut with as much panache as Blackpink.
Ten years ago, Epik High was in jeopardy when online trolls went on a malicious rampage to defame frontman Tablo. “I took my family to Tokyo and then to Hawaii to keep them away from the awe-inspiringly hellish thing that was happening to me,” he says. “I remember everything about that trip. It kept me sane for a little bit. Call it a sane-cation.”
When Big Hit Entertainment announced that it was launching a new boy band, the internet went wild digging for more information. Why? Because Big Hit is home to the world’s most famous boy band — BTS — and everyone wanted to know who TXT was.
“We can speak Hebrew, Polish, Spanish, Hindi, German, Japanese and many more languages,” says M.O.N.T. “We really enjoy learning languages and we learn it through music most of the time, so it’s easy for us to memorize vocabulary.”
ATEEZ is embarking on a sold-out tour of the United States (including dates in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York), which will be followed by a European leg. “I want to take in the sights of many cities,” says group leader Hongjoong, 20. “I want to visit the various landmarks in each city (like) Times Square in New York. If there’s time, I’d also like to attend other artists’ concerts.” Though the South Korean band is less than half a year old, their enthusiastic fan base initiated this tour via MyMusicTaste (https://www.mymusictaste.com), an online service that allows fans to request shows in their area.
One of the things that has impressed me about K-Pop’s idol system is that it has developed some truly talented actors. They remind me of performers during the Golden Age of Hollywood, when entertainers were trained to sing, dance and act. Two highly-acclaimed K-Dramas — “SKY Castle” and “Memories of the Alhambra” — featured young K-Pop stars in strong co-starring roles. In the former, SF9’s Chani (né Kang Chan-Hee) put in a stellar performance as a high school student framed for murder. In the latter, EXO’s Chanyeol (né Park Chan-Yeol) played a terrified teenage game developer.